Who, What, When, Where, How?

These questions flood through my mind unbidden. I try to push them away and just do the day's work, or at least figure out what the day's work should be. It's already late morning and I've barely begun to begin. I still sit at home on the couch with laptop, hot tea and headache.

Some people grow up with a burning desire to do one thing, or they develop such a desire later in life - to write, to investigate, to organize, to preach, to manage, to design, to teach. Not me, I can be happy doing many of those things, and a few more besides; I just don't do them well enough to get paid for it! I rather fell into science as a career. I asked why almost as soon as I could talk; ask my mom if you don't believe me, because she remembers this painfully well since well-mannered children were not to question everything they saw and heard! Science was the one place that questioning everything and wanting to understand "why" seemed to be acceptable.

I loved science in high school, at first because it was science and the teachers were good, and maybe later on just because I wanted to be different than the other girls. They were cheerleaders, popular girls, beauty queens and theater lovers, and I didn't belong. College was better, but hit or miss until I found a niche that I enjoyed, and the niche enjoyed me and rewarded me with A's. My "career", as with so many scientists, is the result of many serendipitous twists and turns.

Somehow I have wandered away from my niche and have ended up where I do not belong. I am alone in my office, without vision or drive to achieve, without other scientists or graduate students to talk with, unproductive, and unmotivated and in physical pain. I struggle to even go in and sit at my desk for a while each day and this is not like me. My daddy named me "his little work horse" when I was growing up. I have always loved to work hard and long - at anything - and to see the fruits of my labor. Now I struggle with the overwhelming sense of being overwhelmed and not knowing how to proceed either at work or at home. I sit, almost frozen, holding my breath in pain, in pain. The pain can, and sometimes is, physical. But there is also the pain of waiting to hear if my position will be continued, apparently based on the bottom line of a budget and nothing more. But one cannot sit for two months and wait; there are still tasks that must be accomplished at home and at work. There is still a drive, even if driven by conscience alone, to be productive and fruitful.

So, I will continue to wait and I wonder what God has in mind for my future. I have taken all the responsible adult steps and even checked with a senior university official to make sure that they were the right steps for the right reasons. And yet, the waiting must continue, because He does not answer me quickly or clearly at present.

I am weary of waiting, especially in some personal areas. Some days I wrestle with God in prayer as did Jacob*. Some days, as Jacob did before me, I realize quite painfully that God has permanently set my "hip" out of its socket for reasons that are not clear to me and I struggle just to hold on to His feet. I cling to His feet and beg Him to hear me, to answer me, to bless me. It is quiet, it is still and I want to give up because I am weary of trying to hold on, but where else is there to go? Who else has the Words of life (John 6:67-69)? Today is a holding on day and I readily acknowledge that even that is not in my own strength. How funny it is that even clinging must be endued with power from on high.

But I know that He is faithful (Phil 1:6; Heb 10:22,23) and will surely continue to lead me all the way home. Surely He is faithful, even through seemingly serendipitous circumstances, to train me and place me where He wants me to be.

"Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading." Oswald Chambers

*Genesis 32, sermons on prayer by Pastor Marty Voltz